


On Hand

by doublejoint



Category: One Piece
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26319424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: “Hey, now that you only have two swords, are you gonna use one in your mouth and one in your hand?”
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Roronoa Zoro
Comments: 1
Kudos: 85





	On Hand

**Author's Note:**

> me, watching the davy back fight: zoro fighting with his hands is good

Luffy doesn’t start noticing Zoro’s hands per se. He always has. It’s hard not to when Zoro fights with a sword each, when he fishes Luffy out of the water with an arm curled around him and his hand gripping, always too tightly. Luffy reaches for Zoro’s hand, and, more and more, Zoro reaches for Luffy’s hand too. He knows the calluses, the most ticklish spots on his palm, the feeling of Zoro’s fingers when they’re a hair’s width away from his wrist. He plays with Zoro’s hands when Zoro’s asleep, swords within reach, on the deck of the  _ Merry _ , when they’re open and palms-up.

Zoro’s a pretty heavy sleeper, so it doesn’t usually wake him up, but sometimes he wakes up anyway when Luffy’s in the middle of stretching out his own hands to wrap them around Zoro’s or tapping their nails together, yawns and gives Luffy an open-mouthed kiss full of his stale breath and dry tongue.

“Zoro, that’s gross,” Luffy says, and then Zoro’s head falls down on Luffy’s shoulder and he rubs his eyes--Zoro isn’t often cute, but like this he almost is.

“You kissed me anyway,” Zoro says.

Luffy always laughs; Zoro’s got him there/ He could have moved away if he really wanted to, but he doesn’t mind too much, not the kiss or Zoro’s fingertips grazing under his chin. Zoro’s hands are nice. They’re well-suited to him. But Luffy stops thinking about them directly when they’re out of his line of his sight and not touching him.

When Zoro sheathes his swords and brings his fists together, though, Luffy all of a sudden can’t keep his eyes off Zoro’s hands. The fight against this two-piece head guy and his crew is unfair enough already; maybe if Zoro were allowed to use his swords it would be unfairness on the Straw Hats’ part. It would balance things out, but they don’t need the balance. Luffy’s faith in Zoro has never wavered before, and it sure as hell won’t now, and he takes Zoro at his word. He doesn’t need weapons. And when he grabs his opponent, five times his size, and throws him around, Luffy’s too far away to see the exact details. He can guess and fill in the gaps with his mind, of Zoro pulling the fabric on his clothes, the imprints left of his fingers after he’s let go. He’s thrown to the ground and gets back up again, his hands empty and palms open. He wraps his hands around invisible hilts, calls his attack, and aims it perfectly, as if there were blades extending instead of air. 

The lack of weapons don’t make much difference--but if they made no difference at all, then surely Zoro wouldn’t be a swordsman at all? Or perhaps it’s fighting with swords that gives him the ability to fight without them? It’s confusing to think about too much, and it’s beside the point, the point being that Zoro looks amazing fighting like this, that he fights almost as well without swords, and that Zoro’s been part of his crew since the beginning and yet Luffy’s never seen anything like this before. Of course he and Sanji win their battle; of course it’s decided when Zoro grabs the other team’s ball and slams him into the goal, one hand holding him by the teeth and the other raised, fist clenched around nothing. 

Luffy drops the thought from the front of his mind overboard like a too-small fish soon after, because there are more pressing matters, like the boxing match and then Aokiji and then the ship and Usopp and Robin and CP9, one right after the other. He can keep up no problem. But there’s rarely time to just be, him and Zoro. There’s a tug on a hand here, a combined attack there, a kiss he leaves on Zoro’s neck after they cut through the wave and Zoro’s eyes following him afterwards, like he’s resigned to waiting until they have a little more time but he’s not exactly happy about it. (If there were ever a time that they really resented this--that they got in the way of the crew or each other’s dreams, or that they couldn’t stand something like that getting in the way of the two of them--it’s not like that would ever happen, but Zoro had forced him to talk about it, and, well. They’re nowhere close to there, or even to suggesting it.) So Luffy doesn’t talk about it or really think about it for more than a moment, when he’s first waking up or when he sees Zoro grip one of his swords in a particular way, until after they come back from Enies Lobby.

He’s not actually thinking about it at all until Zoro lifts a bottle of sake to his mouth, his fingers curled around to the edges of the label, and Luffy thinks, suddenly, of Zoro’s fingers curled around nothing, or grabbing and grappling with someone else. He takes another bite of meat, as much as he can fit into his mouth, but keeps looking at Zoro’s thumb resting in the crook of the bottle’s shoulder. He’s got two hands; he can spare one from eating for a while. He grabs another piece of meat with his left hand and, with his right, reaches out for Zoro’s hand when he puts it down. It clasps his own easily, the blunt short ends of his nails pressing against Luffy’s skin. There’s nothing new about it, but it’s long overdue. Zoro clearly shares the sentiment; he runs his thumb over Luffy’s knuckles and picks up the bottle with his other hand. He’s calm but he’s not happy per se, and then Luffy remembers about the rusted sword.

“Hey, now that you only have two swords, are you gonna use one in your mouth and one in your hand?”

“Why would I—?” Zoro starts, then, “I hadn’t thought of that. But no, it’s better if I use two hands.”

“But you looked cool when you and Sanji were fighting those guys on the ring island,” Luffy says. “I bet you could use the other hand for fighting.”

“It wasn’t because I wanted to fight that way,” says Zoro. “It would have been over much more quickly if I could have just cut them down.” 

Luffy bites into a fresh piece of meat--he’s not wrong. “You still looked pretty cool fighting like that, though.”

Zoro smiles, the semi-permanent crease in his brow smoothing out for half a second. “Thanks.”

Luffy laughs. Zoro squeezes his hand.

(“After all,” Luffy says, a few minutes later. “You are my swordsman.”)


End file.
